Who triggered the genocidal slaughter of nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in 1994?Convictions by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda confirm that the genocide was planned in…

The United States and China this month celebrated their annual ritual of issuing public reports on each other’s human rights performance. Once again, their mutual critiques read like ships passing in the night: each country stresses issues where it looks good and the other looks bad. Once again, in denouncing each other’s human rights shortcomings, they are both mostly right.…

When is a nation legally responsible for atrocities carried out by armed groups it supports in another nation? And what are the consequences?

These questions are not merely theoretical. In 1986 the International Court of Justice (also known as the World Court) ruled that the United States was not generally liable for human rights violations committed by the Contras in Nicaragua. Even though the US created, funded and trained the Contras, the Court ruled that the US was not responsible for most of their actions, because Washington did not have “effective control of the military or paramilitary operations in the course of which the alleged violations were committed.”…

Few people outside Saddam Hussein’s base among Iraqi Sunnis will mourn the bloodydictator’s passing. But Americans may come to regret our government’s complicity inputting him to death after a patently unfair trial. For some observers, we will have…

On the morning of August 10, as news broke that British police were arresting suspects ina plot to bomb flights to the US, I was in a New York airport, stuck in the longestsecurity line I have seen since 9/11, under strict orders to jettison my tooth paste and…